The present invention relates to portable lathes and in particular to portable flange facers.
Portable flange facers find application in a variety of areas including heat exchangers in power plants, fiberglass pipe flanges in chemical plants, hatch openings in shipyards, digester flanges in pulp mills, submarines, propeller hubs, large bull gears, and shoulders inside large pipes. In such applications, pipe flanges often need refacing or regrooving in order to repair deterioration of the flange face and prevent leakage caused by such deterioration. It is impractical to remove large pipes in order that they be taken to a machine shop for refacing and, as a result, portable flange facers have been developed to perform the refacing and regrooving in the field without removing the pipe from its installation. Such field repairs reduce downtime and extensive disassembly of the system under repair.